Rising Stakes Will Save Your Novel

“This book is like a soap opera! It’s so boring.”

Have you heard of this complaint before?

To be clear, I have nothing against soap operas, and even enjoyed many of them. Angry wives, sleazy bosses, messy scandals, secret babies — bring on all the drama!

But some people complain that these plot events are too sentimental and over the top.

Plus, there’s the problem of episodic structure.

For TV shows, before Netflix made it easy for you to catch up with everything from Supernatural to Friends, producers expected most people to miss episodes.

So they had to tell the story in a way where the plot doesn’t rely on prior episodes.

You can understand each episode even if you haven’t watched the series before.

However, with a novel, the reader typically reads from the first to the last page. Yes, even for big tomes like War and Peace.

So, if there’s no sense of buildup where previous events clearly impact later events, then it feels fruitless and unsatisfying. Like eating plastic mush.

The 20+ hours you spent reading the earlier chapters didn’t matter at all.

Might as well throw your book at the wall.

The “sagging middle” phenomenon

Have you heard of this phenomenon?

This happens when we don’t get a sense of rising stakes, where things grow worse for the characters.

An example of rising stakes:

A hero tries to catch a thief, only to discover a big, underground gang where the thief was from. Now the hero is in danger for his life.

The problems become more pressing, more important, more complicated, etc.

It’s the sense that we’re going up, that we’re gaining something as we go through each chapter. We embroil ourselves deeper and deeper into things.

E.g. Princess Stella finds out her father’s dying of an unknown disease, and he names her as his heir, even though she doesn’t want to rule. Then her father dies. And she must become ruler.

Stella can’t hide from her responsibilities, so she tries her best to be queen.

But while she has friends and allies, she also gets caught in a web of political games, with greedy nobles who take advantage of her inexperience. They grab what they want from her.

The queen and her friends try desperately to fight back. And to stay alive.

In other words, we want the consequences of failure to become increasingly serious. The obstacles are bigger, the characters are more afraid, and so on.

In contrast, a story will have a “sagging middle” if it feels drawn out, where nothing is increasing or progressing.

When you have a soap opera style story, you get the sense that each episode’s stakes are roughly the same as the others. Like nothing changed.

For instance, Leyla and Rose have a sweet, almost romantic bonding in episode 13. They hug and give each other kind, encouraging words.

But by episode 14, they’re back to being snappy coworkers who hurl insults at one another. It’s as if their bonding episode never happened and they had amnesia.

Case Example: The Billionaire’s Accidental Bride

On social media, loads of people raved about how addictive this story is.

I agreed with them…until later.

(Spoilers ahead!)

It had an epic story setup.

A famous top model, Emma, retired from her career because her fiancé persuaded her not to work. Her fiancé, Nathan, used to be her manager.

But one day, Emma finds out he’s been cheating on her with another model, Amber.

Emma is devastated, but she’s not going down without a fight.

She encounters the billionaire CEO of an influential media company, Eric. His family pressures him to get married. He hates that. But to appease his parents, he tells his assistant to find him a willing bride.

Emma overhears them. She comes out and tells Eric she would be happy to be his bride. She explains that she was a top model, but retired because of her fiancé, who was cheating on her all along.

At first, Eric is offended that this random stranger sprung out at him like that. But his assistant convinces him to take her offer, since she’s a former top model. She’s gorgeous and can be a great ally. His parents would definitely be happy with his choice.

So he reluctantly agrees.

Thus, Emma revives her career as a model.

When Eric watches his new wife on the stage, he is awestruck not just by her beauty but by her skills, too. She is a top model, after all.

Emma outshines Amber, the woman who’s been snagging her ex-fiancé.

Nathan tries to guilt trip Emma into quitting and letting Amber win. But Emma refuses.

Eric, with his power and influence, helps his wife get resources to boost her career, and also beat Amber.

Though they don’t know each other well, Eric sympathizes with Emma. Plus, as she’s his wife, he believes in supporting her as much as he can.

Before long, as you would expect, Eric falls in love with Emma, and she with him.

I loved that. But from that point on, the story grew stale.

The sad downturn

The episodes afterward became contest after contest between Emma and Amber.

Amber tries to ruin Emma, but Emma is truly spectacular and has support from her rich and powerful husband. So Emma wins every time.

While I was happy to see good people win, it also got too boring.

The villains, Amber and Nathan, are devious but incompetent.

They try planting a spy, a woman who pretends to be Emma’s assistant. But Emma quickly spots the ruse, and persuades the woman to help her instead of Amber.

So the woman becomes Emma’s spy instead, and reports wrong information to Amber.

The spy plot would have been fun if the threat wasn’t neutralized so quickly.

At a later point of attack, Nathan calls his older sister for help. His sister loathes Amber, but doesn’t want her brother to suffer. So she schemes, too.

To be fair, her plots are smarter than Amber’s or Nathan’s. Unfortunately, she too fails miserably, because Emma and Eric are too strong.

Alas. If the villains ever win, even once, the story would have been more compelling.

But as it stands, the combined force of Emma the top model and Eric the powerful rich guy, is unbeatable.

While I’d rather the good guys win, I don’t want them to win so easily and consistently.

In fact, I got so tired of this pattern of easy wins, that I stopped reading altogether.

Perhaps the stakes do ramp up much higher afterwards. But it’s too late if you’ve already lost your reader.

Of course, since there are many enthusiasts of this online novel, others may disagree with my analysis.

But my point is that if your good guys are invincible, and your bad guys are weak, then the stakes are too low. This makes for an unsatisfying read.

Horror novels can stagnate, too

In case you think only rom coms can get stale, horror novels can grow dull, too!

I’m reading a web novel where the characters got tricked into an evil simulator. The simulator throws them into horror movie games and they have to beat the villains to survive.

At first, I was riveted by the story. I loved the innovative plot and world-building. However, at some point, it became a bit boring.

Making us wait too long for the good parts

It took so long to reach highly anticipated points.

We had to wait two whole books for the heroes to rescue their close friends, Anna and Camden.

During the wait, the characters go through quests to rescue other people that we’ve never met. That’s fine but you can’t expect the reader to care about new characters who are strangers to us.

There was a side quest called “The Throughline” that took forever, too. It’s not a bad storyline, and it had interesting twists. But it took too many pages to wrap up.

In fact, some readers complained that “The Throughline” added nothing to the story.

Overpowered villain keeps us hopelessly stuck

The main villain, the evil simulator, is simply too powerful.

We want a sense of development in defeating the Big Bad, which is the primary story goal.

At first, there seemed to be progress but now…maybe not.

The characters embark on a risky project to help them escape. But it turns out the evil simulator knew their plan all along, so they’re back to square one.

Normally, I appreciate these “all hope is lost” moments, but this hopelessness has lasted for 5 books and counting…

This series is still ongoing.

Overall, this horror series is impressive in its worldbuilding and plot. Yet, the dragged out tension, and the futility of the characters’ efforts, made the series much less enjoyable and at times even boring.

The story is still incredibly popular, however, so there are saving graces. But just because it’s popular doesn’t mean there aren’t things it could improve on!

A romantasy novel by an author I greatly admire

What blows my mind about this last example, is that the author is actually very skilled.

They wrote one of the most compelling romances I’ve ever read. And they’re one of my favorite authors.

However, this other novel they wrote, fell flat for me.

Too nice and happy

The romance was very wholesome. But too much so.

Technically there was great relationship tension, where the characters go through hurdle after hurdle.

However, the characters are such clearly good people, that you know they would never hurt one another. So the stakes felt low.

The main characters have traumatic backstories, but at the present time, they live in an ideal environment with no worries.

One of the characters is so strong and undefeatable, that they have no fear of being harmed.

There was a point where a villain did pose a real threat.

Yet, an ally quickly convinces her to let the heroes go.

The bad guy turned good too fast.

In contrast, there’s this fabulous story written by the same author

As I mentioned above, the same author wrote another romance that was so epic.

The conflict and tension were handled much better here.

It felt like the characters could be in real danger (well, emotional danger, not physical). The stakes were much higher, that I was worried for them.

For the book I’m critiquing, aside from that villain event that was quickly resolved, I wasn’t worried for them. It was pretty much smooth sailing.

The romance felt too easy, like a guaranteed win. Yes, most romances have a guaranteed happy ending, but the journey can still be exhilarating. For this story, I felt little urgency or danger.

The descriptions are beautiful, the character development is deep, and the dialogues are fun. But the stakes felt too low for me, that I had trouble sustaining my attention.

This is a shame since I normally adore the author’s work. This is one of their earlier books, however, so perhaps they were less skilled back then.

What do you think?

With the above case examples, do you see why we need to have rising stakes, not flat stakes, to engross the reader’s attention?

There are nuances, too. For instance, there can be rising stakes, but the author took too long to move up to the next level of stakes.

The villain could be excessively strong, that it’s too hopeless, and it feels like we’re getting nowhere.

Some other times, the villains are too weak. The problems are solved too easily. So the lack of challenge feels flat and unstimulating.

How about you? When you feel detached from a story, are there “flat stakes” in the tale?

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